


i am shy as a wild creature

by babykanima



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, descriptions of abuse, inspired by lady godiva
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 10:15:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18163880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykanima/pseuds/babykanima
Summary: The townsfolk cry out to see their lady so but she refuses to flinch.Her body is a tapestry that denotes her suffering.For the North.For Winterfell.Let them see.It is a long ride. It is the longest ride of her life.





	i am shy as a wild creature

**Author's Note:**

> i normally post my notes at the end of my fics but i feel, given the sensitive nature of this fic, that i should post them here instead. please, _please_ be mindful of the tags and warnings of this fic. i do describe what ramsay did to sansa which includes descriptions of both torture and rape.
> 
> i'm also not the most dany or tyrion friendly in this fic but i did try to do both characters justice. regardless, remember that this is from sansa's pov.
> 
>   
>  _this fic was inspired by the legend of lady godiva as well as[this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11975838) wonderful fic by kay245_  
> 

It’s her first husband who speaks, opens his mouth to let out a suggestion so abhorrent that for a moment she’s transported back to when she was a prisoner in Kings Landing.

The last time she’d heard these words she’d already been wearing her wedding dress, though she hadn’t known it at the time.

Now, she can’t hold back the flinch his words imbue, the disgust appearing on her face for just a moment—

(But it is long enough for him to flinch in turn, for him to look both ashamed and offended that the idea of marriage to him affects her so.

Who is he to feel offence? She wonders. Him, who would touch her and _rape_ her and has the absolute _gall_ to ask her permission for it beforehand?

As if that would make it allowable.)

— before a wall of ice stronger than the one her brother-cousin manned for years shutters across her features.

She will not show weakness.

Not now, not in front of him.

She is not that little girl anymore and Tyrion Lannister does not frighten her.

Next to him, his queen drapes her soft hand over his own undersized one and looks just as offended on his behalf, offended at the idea of Sansa denying this royal request to finally consummate a marriage that should by rights have been officially annulled years ago.

Or is it an order?

He looks across the table at her with a weak smile, like they’re allies in this, and asks her if she could not possibly grow to care for him? He may be small but their children would be clever, powerful.

Care.

For a _Lannister_.

Children?

With a _Lannister_?

All these years have passed and it seems he still wilfully misunderstands her dislike at the very thought of sharing a bed, a life, with one such as him. 

He’ll never grasp that it’s the blood that runs through his veins that holds more weight with her than his body ever will.

She wants to tell him that she will poison herself with moon tea before she ever allows that blood to mix with hers. She wants to rip the dagger from his belt and plunge it into his heart — or hers. She wants to flee from this room she had come to with the expectation of preparation for the rest of winter, this room where she is alone.

She wants—

Her eyes meet Jon’s and she’s so relieved to see that he looks as horrified as she feels, as disgusted and betrayed.

She loves him for it.

She truly does.

As their eyes meet he seems to come unfrozen and he protests then, angrily, _vehemently_ , because of course he does.

Dear, sweet Jon, who vowed to protect her from everybody but himself.

Her heart had broken when he’d left her alone with the weight of a crown on her head and no legitimacy to back it up, then broken again when he came back with Daenerys Targaryen at his side and in his bed. As soon as Jon had let her go from his greeting hug, the foreign queen had moved forward and curled into his side, beaming her beautiful smile up at him while he declared for all to hear that he’d given her their home.

Sansa had learned young that a beautiful smile can hide the ability to inflict much pain and it’s this lesson Jon had made sure she didn’t forget.

(Jon, and Petyr, and Ramsay, and Joffrey, and _Robb,_ and—)

He’d fallen for a pretty face, just like Robb. 

And though he protests now she can’t help but wonder if his lover could convince him of their plan. Would he abandon her to the Lannister’s as Robb did as well?

Her mouth is frozen shut and she fears if she opens it she may be sick.

Across from her, Daenerys has moved her hand from Tyrion’s to Jon’s and she smiles sweetly at him. Beseechingly. 

“It’s for the greater good, a match to tie two powerful houses—”

“Tyrion is not part of a powerful house,” Jon spits, snatching his hand from his lover’s and ignoring the brief look of hurt that flashes across her face. “And even if he was, he is a second son and a kinslayer to boot. He is beneath her.”

The silver queen’s face hardens at that, “I am the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdom’s and Tyrion Lannister is heir to Casterly Rock if I say he is. As for the kinslaying? Tywin Lannister was instrumental in the Usurpers rise and he deserved to die, I will not hold that against my Hand.”

Jon shakes his head, “I will not hold it against him either, but I will not reward him for it with _Sansa_.”

“I am not asking you, _Lord Snow_.” She looks disdainfully down her nose at him. “But nor am I ordering the Lady Sansa. I am not a monster.”

“Then prove it! Do not—”

Ignoring him, she turns then to Sansa for the first time, eyes hard. “I know this is not what you wanted but it _is_ for the best. By all accounts, you are a smart girl and Lord Tyrion is correct in stating that your children together will surely be clever.” She pauses, “I _could_ order you but I hope it doesn’t come to that. Remember that this is for the North, for us all.”

Not all monsters do monstrous things, Sansa thinks but does not say. And not all Queens are kindly.

Regardless of what Daenerys Targaryen is, regardless of how she twists the motive behind it, this is truly a monstrous ask.

________________________

It is Arya who comes to her afterwards and she doesn’t even question how her little sister already knows.

“I’ll kill him.” It’s said fiercely, the words spit from thin lips as though her small body can’t contain her fury. “I’ll chop his hands off before he has a chance to touch you with them.”

And _oh_ , but it is the sweetest offer she’s heard all day.

It is a woman’s lot in life to suffer, this Sansa knows.

Suffer for their fathers, their brothers, their husbands.

Sansa has suffered more than many, though not more than any other woman with a heartbeat and a body that can be given away to a man.

She is not a Targaryen Queen.

She will not give speeches on what her suffering has earned her, for she has learned that suffering earns a body nothing but pain and the ability to withstand it. 

She will not let herself forget that others have suffered too.

“I have bled for the North.” She says eventually. “If I must do it again, I will only do it at the North’s behest.”

Not at the behest of a foreign queen.

________________________

For a moment (it’s all she will allow herself, _she will not falter_ ), her eyes turn towards the ground.

Her hair has been combed out carefully to covers her breasts, she has afforded herself that much in the way of modesty, but the rest of her? The rest of her is pale as snow in the blue winter light. 

She is the North.

It’s that thought that makes her raise her chin,

(That thought, and the thought of her lady mother. What would she think to see her daughter so? Would she be ashamed? Proud? Would she turn her back on Sansa like everybody else?

No, she thinks. _Never_.)

and nudge the white palfrey forward, out of the gates of Winterfell, out of her the safety of her home and hearth, and into the snow-covered streets of the town she grew up looking down at.

The townsfolk cry out to see their lady so but she refuses to flinch. 

Her scars shine like silver across her skin, some as fine as the tooth comb she keeps on her night table, some blotched and dotted like morning dew caught in a web.

Her husband had never been particularly careful with his blades.

She’s never seen it herself but she knows there’s a deep, deep ‘R’ that’s been carved into the skin above her rump. Her husband had let Myranda do it, let his lover lick the blood that welled up afterwards, and then let her hold Sansa down as he took her.

Her body is a tapestry that denotes her suffering.

For the North.

For Winterfell.

Let them see.

It is a long ride. It is the longest ride of her life.

The Dothraki who’ve been left outside the castle walls look at her with lust and she wonders if they even see her scars or just her bare body. She wonders if they want to scar her too, scar her more. Break her like one of their horses, or like one of the stone houses their Khaleesi promised them.

She looks away.

She does not look down.

Mothers are ushering their children indoors, fathers are averting their eyes.

_Look at me_ , she wants to scream. _Look what I have endured for you._

Is it respect they show now? Or disgust?

She’d once stepped into a frozen lake, knowing that it could mean her death. Knowing that for all she held winter in her blood, she was not able to withstand the cold like the Dragon Queen could withstand fire. 

She was only human, after all.

Now, the hairs on her arms and legs stand up straight even as the falling snow melts upon her skin, and her eyelashes, and her burning cheeks.

Beneath their flimsy covering she can feel her nipples pebble in the harsh winter breeze.

There is a burn along her collarbone, and another across the top of her arm. 

He’d whipped her once, with a braided cord he told her he used to break his dogs. Teach them _manners_. Mayhaps it would teach you manners as well, he’d simpered.

Sansa was a lady at three, any manners Ramsay taught her would’ve given her septa nightmares.

Underneath it all there are older scars from her time in Kings Landing, scars from a knight’s blade. More lessons learned. 

Let them see.

She doesn’t stop until he stands before her, heartbreak visible in his eyes but no pity.

Never pity.

Her Jon has suffered too.

“ _Sansa_ ,” He says, already moving to take off his cloak. “What—”

She tightens her grip of the reins of her horse, straightens her back and looks down upon the King in the North.

“I have been asked to marry Lord Tyrion Lannister.” Her words ring out in the otherwise silent town centre. “I have been told it is for the good of the North.”

The townspeople cry out at that, a few spit on the ground as though the taste of Sansa _Lannister_ is as abhorrent to them as it is to her.

Jon moves forward then, abandoning the clasp of his cloak to allow a scarred hand to hover over her scarred thigh but not quite touching. No, Jon would never touch without her permission. This she knows.

“I won’t let them.” He swears angrily, so softly only she can hear. “I will kill them all before I let them.”

She’s helpless to contain a sob at that, so very relieved to know he wouldn’t abandon her. Not for her. Not for anybody. She bites her lip before another can escape though, and looks away from him.

She is a Stark of Winterfell, she has bled for the North more than anybody alive, her bare body and the chainmail of scars decorating it is proof enough of that.

But she is also a Tully.

She will do her duty.

But her people will afford her the respect of knowing what they ask of her.

“If this is what the North asks of me, I will do my duty to you all.” She pauses, takes a shuddering breath in. This is it. “But you will look me in the eyes as you ask it of me.”

It’s the women who she takes note of, the Northern women who stand tall and prideful in a time when pride is all they have. They had cleaned the sheets of her maidenbed, wringing out blood by the bucketful.

It is the women who push their way forward now, past lustful Dothraki and curious Unsullied alike, to stand around her in a protective circle. 

The men follow.

“ _Never_.”

She doesn’t know who speaks but it opens the floodgates,

_“Never!”_

_“Our Queen!”_

_“Queen in the North!”_

_“Stark!”_

She falls then, crumples in relief, straight into Jon’s arms. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap his cloak around her protectively, cocooning her body against his own and she finally, _finally_ , lets herself shake.

She’s so cold.

She was so scared.

One day soon she thinks she might like him to wrap a cloak around her in a different way, but for now she allows herself to burrow in his warmth and let herself be protected as around them the people of Wintertown begin throwing stones and snow at the forces of the Targaryan queen.

They may have lost an ally today, and perhaps a few lives may also be lost if their people do not calm their fighting, but she also knows they’ve gained much in her parading her naked body through a frozen town.

The North will not bend or break, she has shown them that she did not and they’ve repaid her by following her example.

What is her pride compared to that?


End file.
